The Lucky Number/Fowl Play

The punctilious motorist, bowling along a Scottish highway at twenty miles an hour, had espied a small farmstead by the roadside—a group of insignificant whitewashed buildings. He disengaged his clutch, applied gentle pressure to the footbrake, and blew three long and considerate blasts upon his horn.

Instantly there came a rush, a scramble, and a scurry; and a perfect avalanche of hens dashed out of a gateway into the path of the car, intent apparently upon indulgence in the risky but fascinating pastime of “Last across the road.” They were followed by a waddling cohort of ducks. Both brakes went on hard, but it was too late to do anything. Before the slithering motor-car could be brought to a standstill, it had ploughed its way right through the squawking, fluttering mob of fowls—the ducks had prudently halted and turned tail—and taken full toll.

“Fairly asked for it that time, they did,” observed Charles the chauffeur reposing in the back seat.

But the conscience-stricken owner of the car drew up at the side of the road and alighted. Simultaneously a patriarchal and wrathful old gentleman in tweed knickerbockers and a Balmoral bonnet emerged at the double from the farm gate. He was followed by a silly-looking youth of fourteen.

The old gentleman Surveyed the havoc—two hens lying dead upon the road, while another scuttered in the dust with a broken wing—and raised clenched hands to heaven.

“Is that the way,” he roared, “for a body tae gang raging past a man's farm gate?”

He crossed the road, and, picking up the hen with the broken wing, wrung its neck methodically. Then he turned again to the assassins, as if seeking further necks. The chauffeur, affecting extreme terror, took refuge behind the car. But the farmer addressed himself to the arch-culprit.

“What for,” he demanded, “could ye no give a bit toot on your horn?”

“I did,” said the owner meekly; “three times.”

The old gentleman turned to his simple-looking companion.

“Heard ye ever the like of that?” he inquired in outraged tones.

The boy shook his head, obviously pained that a man should be so depraved as to add falsehood to murder.

“I’ll need tae be asking you gentlemen for your names and addresses,” pursued the owner of the fowls grimly; “for tae give tae the polis. We canna allow—”

“Not quite so much of it, if you please,” requested the chauffeur, lighting a cigarette. “You know you ain't got no legal rights over us at all. If you choose to allow your chickings to wander all over the bloomin’ road, they must put up with the consequences—see? Ain't that right, sir?”—to his employer.

The employer, who was quite as hazy upon Scots law as the chauffeur himself, nodded timidly.

“Of course he said. I am quite willing to pay for the fowls killed,” he said.

At this the owner of the slaughtered animals made a distinct and obvious effort to mitigate the severity of his expression—no light feat when you possess a long, lean face encompassed by whiskers, together with a clean-shaven upper lip.

“I canna tak’ less than ten shillings a heid for them,” he announced.

“Reg’lation price for a hen is four-and-six,” interposed the chauffeur, glib from long practice in such computations.

The farmer turned a pitying eye upon him.

“Man,” he inquired witheringly, “have ye ever rin over a hen before?”

The chauffeur tactfully ignored this query. He turned to his employer.

“Six 'alf-crowns will do him proud, sir,” he announced confidently.

The bereaved owner fought for breath.

“Can you no see for yoursels what sort these hens are?” he roared. “There’s nane like them for twenty miles. It's lucky for you the guidwife is no in, or ye’d get a sorting frae her, I’m telling you! She had a name for every birrd on the place.”

“What's the name of that one in your 'and?” inquired the chauffeur. “George Washington?”

But his contrite employer begged him by a gesture to refrain from complicating the negotiations by badinage, and was about to speak, when the venerable orator broke forth afresh.

“They’re no the thrawn hauf-starved beasts ye would be getting in the south. Did ever ye rin ower sic hens as those in the streets of London?”

The owner of the motor-car, with the old gentleman's basilisk eye piercing his very soul, was constrained to admit he never had.

“Then gie us seven-and-six a heid for them,” was the prompt reply.

“Tirpitz, old feller,” observed the chauffeur with conviction, “you are absolutely It. Six 'alf-crowns is what you’ll get—and easy money too!”

The old man turned with a dramatic gesture to his companion.

“Away and bring the polis!” he cried.

“Can I drive you?” inquired the chauffeur politely. “I noticed a copper about fifteen miles back. Diggin' potatoes in a field, 'e was.”

“Say six-and-six,” said the owner of the motor-car, looking at his watch.

The final compromise was six-and-nine. The chauffeur was anxious to retain the corpses, as was his undoubted right; but the owner of the car was five hundred miles from home and declined to burden himself with decomposing poultry. Five minutes later, after a constrained farewell, the car and its occupants disappeared from sight over the hill.

The old gentleman slipped the money into his pocket and handed the bodies of the slain to the silly faced boy.

“Take you these tae the mustress, Jock,” he said, “and tell her I’m roarin’ for my dinner. And feed the hens before you get your ain!” His eyes snapped.

The silly-faced boy nodded and disappeared within. Presently he returned. In one hand he carried a bowl of Indian corn, in the other an aged motor-horn.

He walked out of the gate, and, having emptied the contents of the bowl into the very middle of the highway, sounded his horn long and loudly.

The hens rushed out.

THE END